


Swim With Me, My Sister, When I Dive

by left_handed_moth



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Canon Permanent Character Death, Canon Temporary Character Death, Deleted Scenes, Episode: s02e08 No Future in the Past, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Child Abuse, blue Peacemaker headcanons, like this is not an uplifting fic at all but it still treats Willa better than canon ever did, specifically references to Willa's canon backstory that aren't very detailed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16346021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/left_handed_moth/pseuds/left_handed_moth
Summary: Set during s2e8, during the time between Wynonna's visions of the past and her revival.  While she's flatlined, she sees Willa, and has a chance to talk to her.The title is taken from 'The Great White Ocean' by Anohni.





	Swim With Me, My Sister, When I Dive

Wynonna was standing in the middle of literal nowhere.  She’d been in the church with Bobo before he was Bobo, and now she was nowhere.  It wasn’t blank white or pitch black, it wasn’t anything at all.

And then Willa was there.  She didn’t appear. Instead, all of a sudden, she’d always been there.  She was wearing the same clothes as when Wynonna shot her.

Which meant Wynonna didn’t need to ask what was going on.  You start running out of air, and all of a sudden you’re looking at your dead sister, well, there’s a limited number of things that can mean.

“Oh, this is some fertilizer-quality bullshit,” she said, not to Willa, not because she thought anyone else out there was listening, but just on the general principle of calling bullshit.

“Hello yourself,” said Willa.

“Where am I?”

Willa gestured at the nowhere.

“Yeah, OK.  Drama queen.”

Willa smiled apologetically.  “I don’t know what it’s called.  But it’s not all there is when you die.”

Weirdly calm and weirdly vague.  Maybe Willa wasn’t Willa. She knew how that kind of movie went.   _ I chose a form that you would find comforting _ , which wasn't comforting at all, because what it really meant was  _ Psych!  You thought you’d see your loved one again, but it was me, a mysterious godlike dickhole! _  Or maybe Willa wasn’t better.  She sounded dreamy like she did before.  

“Yeah.  There’s Hell.  I know that much.”

Willa was silent.

Wynonna tried to get a read of her expression to figure out what the silence meant.  She didn’t succeed. “Are you…” she paused to read Willa's face. Still nothing. “You’re not in Hell, are you?  Like, Peacemaker wouldn’t have glowed blue if I was just sending you to Hell like some Revenant. So you can’t be in Hell.”

Wynonna expected more silence, but Willa’s calm expression broke into one of concern as she went to hold Wynonna.  Wynonna fell into her big sister’s arms, all of a sudden shaky, and held onto Willa like they were kids again. “Please tell me I didn’t send you to hell.”  The words hurt her throat coming out, like the idea was too big to say without a lot of pushing.

“Oh, God, no, Wynonna.  Not hell. Not hell,” said Willa, as though she’d pictured herself there when Wynonna brought it up, and was trying to put the thought out of both their minds.

Wynonna loosened her grip. “So...Heaven?”

Willa pulled away to look Wynonna in the eyes.  “I don’t know if I can call it that, but it’s not a bad place.  Even though I wasn’t on the side of the angels.”

“Dude, who cares what side you were on?  It would be fucked-up if you went to Hell.  Anyone who’d look at all the shit that happened to you and not decide to give a girl a break would just be...just, fucked-up!  You know?”

“You’re not fucked-up.”

“Yeah I am,” said Wynonna, automatically.  Then she processed that sentence. “Are you shitting me?”

“You were the one with the magic gun, right?”

“Yeah.  And I wanted to…”  Wynonna sighed, paused to get it right.  “All I was thinking is that I didn’t want you to hurt anymore.  You don’t hurt anymore, right?”

“Honestly?  Sometimes I still do.  I died scared. A lot of the time I lived scared.”

Wynonna pulled away.  Sat cross-legged on the nowhere, just as impossibly as she was standing on it before.  “Fuck,” she said under her breath.

“Dying isn’t an eraser or a reset switch or something like that.  I’ve already been reset. It didn’t take, and I hated it. I’m glad I remember it all.” 

“Right, yeah.  Don’t wanna be the Hot Lead Witch redoing the Stone Witch’s work.”

Willa walked over, crouched beside her.  “I’m safe now, okay? And I’m glad to see you.”

“Even if it means I’m dead?”

“People are selfish like that.”

Wynonna stood up, and started to pace around the nowhere, which, yeah, still weird as balls. “Okay, so, recap.  I’m dead. The big dude, or big lady, or big bigness, picked you to come take me to the other side.”

“I haven’t seen anything that seemed like God yet.  I just knew that you were here, somehow, and I needed to come find you.  I can’t explain how I got here, but I had to try. It didn’t just happen.”

“Try how?  Did you walk, or astrally project, or what?”

“I have no idea.”

Wynonna kicked the air, except it wasn’t air, because it wasn’t anything, because apparently once you’re dead the world still finds more shit you don’t understand so that it can rub your face in just how fucking stupid and small you are.

“But, yeah.  I am here to take you back to where I am.  When you’re ready.”

Wynonna gestured frantically at the giant pregnant belly that Willa had somehow neglected to mention.  “Do I look like I’m ready to be dead? I have shit to do! This--” she gestured again-- “is one of a fucktillion things I need to do, that only I can do, that will not get done if I’m dead!”  She practically screamed the word  _ dead _ , and maybe the volume did it, but it hit her.

Dead.  As in  _ and gone _ .  As in, goodbye cruel world.  As in goodbye world that is where so many people that matter are.  As in goodbye Waverly. As in you need me and I’m not there because I fucked up and died somehow, and I don’t even know how, because I was off playing time traveler, learning all this incredibly important shit that I need to tell you, because it’s about something that will make you safe, which you can never be now, because I can’t keep you safe ever again, because I am  _ fucking dead. _

As in  _ I don’t want to be dead. _

She wailed.  Howled. From parts of her lungs so deep she forgot she had them.  She fell to her knees. Then she fell the rest of the way. A tiny part of her felt like this was a tantrum, like she was being a baby.  A bigger part of her felt like, well, what merits a tantrum if not this? The rest of her was just a big, tacky neon sign with the word DEAD glowing in a sickly shade of Vegas.

Then a part of her remembered Willa was there.  Her big sister was there. And she needed her there so badly.  She looked up, and she saw Willa. Poised to give comfort as soon as her little sister was all screamed out and ready to talk.

All Willa said was, “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Wynonna smiled weakly.  “Sucks the big one.”

“The biggest one of all.”

“The cosmic one.  You get a big ol’ load of stardust right in your face.”

And Willa’s  _ Wynonna, that’s gross _ laugh sounded just like it did when they were kids.

“I was the one who told you what that meant, remember?”

Wynonna smiled.  “Yeah. A kid at school told me that it was about pig butts.  Or cow butts. Whichever one grossed me out more. And when you told me, I sort of wanted to know why, but I mostly wanted to know how, because I’d seen a couple dicks already, and I remembered there, you know, not being all that much there to suck on.”

“And I proceeded to give you the facts of life, if the facts of life had been passed through a game of telephone in at least two different languages.  I think I made things up to scare you, too.”

Wynonna didn’t have it in her to laugh out loud like she wanted to.  But since she’d found herself here, it was like she’d woken up from a dream.  Like her entire life hadn’t really happened after all. But when she and Willa talked about it, talked about sharing it, that made it feel real.

Willa’s voice got more serious.  “You heard all of that, and you wanted to tell me exactly which changes were good, and which were bad, and how you were gonna be sure to only let the good parts happen.  And I said some cliche like  _ it happens to everyone _ .  Well…” she waved her arms at the nothing again.

“...it happens to everyone!” said Wynonna.  “Shit, I guess it does.”

“Listen.” said Willa, “I’m going to tell you this before we get where we’re going, because I’ve been waiting to tell you ever since I got myself halfway sorted.  Which didn’t happen when I was alive. Spending time with you, when we were kids? That was when I was me. With Daddy I was the Heir, and an Heir that wasn’t any good, that was doomed to…”  She inhaled, then started over. “I don’t think you realized just how horrible Daddy was. It’s okay if you sent him to Hell, when you shot him.

“Jesus!”

Willa stared at her.  “I meant it.”

“Sorry.  It was a harsh thing to hear.  I guess I really didn’t realize.  Sorry. Again.”

“Bobo’s in Hell, right?”

Hearing Willa talk like that about him was a relief Wynonna didn’t know she needed. “Right between the fucking eyes.”  She made a finger-gun and fired it.

“Good.”

Neither of them needed to say the words  _ thirteen years old _ .

“For the record,” said Willa, “anyone who’s ever written a version of  _ Beauty and the Beast _ is kindly invited to eat my shit.”

“Okay, now I’m starting to like harsh Willa.”

“Willa is harsh.  When Bobo’s ex-friend turned me into Eve, he was just doing the same thing Daddy and Bobo did, except he didn’t pretend the person he was turning me into was Willa.  They all wanted to make something out of me that I wasn’t, and own that thing. And now they can’t, and they’re dead too, so I guess I win.”

“Men.” said Wynonna.  “God, I hate that I’m always right when I say  _ men _ like that.  Except I’m not anymore, because we’re going to Heaven.  Guys who do that shit don’t get into Heaven,” she said expectantly.  She paused because, holy fucking shit, Heaven. “What’s it even like up there?  Over there?”

“It’s a lot like being alive.  But without the bad parts.”

“I have no idea what that would be like.”

“I mean it’s a real, normal place.  Except that you’re safe there. Really truly safe.  And when you’ve been there long enough, you start to realize that you’re done not being safe.  Forever.”

“Fuck.  I still can’t say that I can picture that.  God, what’s wrong with...fuck, everything?”

“I know, Wynonna.  It’s going to feel more like that when you get settled in.”

All Wynonna could think is that she hadn’t asked for Heaven.  She hadn’t expected it. During the parts of her life when she didn’t think dying was just an off-switch, she was sure Heaven didn’t have a place for people like her.  And now that she was about to go there, it didn’t feel like a cosmic reward. It felt like a consolation prize.  _ Sorry, Earp, your friends are fucked, your kid’s not gonna get born, but he a hey, here’s a halo for your trouble. _

Willa took her hand, and opened her mouth to speak.

 

******

 

Then Wynonna was somewhere instead of nowhere.  In the snow. On her back. She tried to say Willa’s name, but her lungs weren’t letting her.  Dolls said it had been only 77 seconds. That whole thing wasn’t even a minute and a half of death.  She got up. Talked to Dolls. Told everyone what they needed to know in order to do what they had to do.  And no more.

Having seen Willa like that was making living without her harder.  She’d tried to look at the woman she brought back from Lou’s cult and see the girl she’d grown up with.  She’d let herself think that she did. But there, in that nothing between being alive and figuring out how to be dead, that was her real reunion with Willa.  So now she actually knew what she’d lost. It was a lot.

That night, sitting on the couch, she told Waverly.  More or less the whole thing. Waverly, at least, needed to know.

“So she’s OK?”

“OK’s pretty relative, babygirl.  Her life was a shit-parade. Then there was Heaven.  I don’t know where that falls in terms of OK or not.”

“Me neither.  I guess I want her to be OK.”  Waverly sighed. “She wasn’t a good sister to me.  Not when she came back, either, you know that. I’m angry at her about it, and I’m pretty much gonna be angry.  But, yeah, shit-parade. Which, by the way, is on my list of memorably regrettable Wynonna-isms.”

“I can do better.”

“Probably.”  Waverly shook her head.  “Heaven is for realsies, huh?”

“I don’t know about that, either.  Willa was kinda vague. She used the word safe, which sounds pretty good to me.  But, talking to her, when I, well, pretty much lost it over being dead, she got it.  She didn’t have to tell me, but I knew that she wished she was alive and in the world.”

“You mean because we’re here?”

“Yeah, but, I don’t know, not just us.  Maybe you have to die to understand.”

“Hard pass.”

Wynonna ruffled Waverly’s hair.  “Damn right.” She sighed. “All I know is that Heaven, or whatever, didn’t seem like salvation.”  She put finger-quotes around  _ salvation. _  “It just felt like the next part of something I didn’t understand, and I was worried about it, just like everything before it.”  She smiled. “So eat my human condition, Jesus freaks!”

“Okay, that’s going on the list too.”

“Nuh-uh.  I don’t regret saying it.  I stand the fuck by it.”

“ _ Eat my human condition?” _

“Look, I have a great human condition.  People wanna jam their faces right in there and just go to town.  She smells just like a rose, and she tastes just like a peach.”

“Okay, as your sister, I’m going to stop you right now before you can add any detail.  And as a lesbian, I’m going to tell you that the roses and peaches stuff is the exact worst kind of inaccurate.”

“I know it is.  I was doing Dire Straits.  Just be glad I didn’t quote the  _ honeysuckle musk _ line instead.”

“Dire Straits?  Seriously?”

“Look, at some point in your twenties, you make your peace with classic rock radio.  It’s just...a change you go through. You will too. You’ll be in the car, hear the Allman Brothers play the  _ doodle-doodle-doodle-do-do-DOOT-doo _ , and rather than dial away, you’ll think, you know what, yeah.  I  _ am _ trying to make a living, and I  _ am _ doing the best I can.”

“We’re getting you checked for brain damage.  Smoke inhalation can do that, you know.”

“It happens to everyone, babygirl.  It happens...to  _ everyone. _ ”

Waverly stared like she was starting to reconsider whether or not brain damage was an actual possibility.

“It was just a thing between me and Willa.  I mean, from earlier today. You had to be there.”  She laughed out loud. You die and come back, and instead of enlightenment, you return to earth with an in-joke that isn’t even funny.  And the thing was, she valued it more than she’d have valued enlightenment. Someone else could be the Buddha. Wynonna was happy just to get to talk about nothing with her sister one more time.

And now she was fucking crying again.

“You miss her,” said Waverly matter-of-factly.

“Like a fucking arm.”  

They sat a while.  Wynonna got up to grab a bottle for Waverly and a ginger ale for herself.  They toasted without saying anything, not even  _ Here’s to Willa. _

Waverly passed out on the couch.  Wynonna put a blanket on her and sat down in an armchair.  She didn’t sleep. Losing consciousness would have felt too much like going someplace other than the world of the living.

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, hi, WEarp fandom! I'm on tumblr with the URL gallifrey-via-pylea. I post a lot about other shows there, but I binged WEarp pretty much just in time to watch the s3 finale as it aired, and, uh, this is definitely the new fan thing I'm most excited about.
> 
> Also, Willa's voice was tough to find, in terms of speech patterns.


End file.
